


writing on the wall

by himbostratus



Series: Imperial University of Rome [2]
Category: Ancient History RPF, Julius Caesar - Shakespeare
Genre: Angst, Depression, Drabble Collection, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2020-06-29 04:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19822981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/himbostratus/pseuds/himbostratus
Summary: A drabble collection about Brutus's time at the Imperial University of Rome at Athens





	1. Chapter 1

The morning is surprisingly crisp, the roads still dark with the rain that had fallen yesterday, the same clouds still perched in the sky, but decidedly less threatening. Only a handful of students mill about campus, given as the clock tower has not even chimed eight. With finals beginning to loom in the not - so - distant future, exhaustion brings even the most studious to their knees. Still, academia stops for no one, and so he picks himself up and goes to class. Brutus regrets not wearing a cloak as he walks across campus, one hand balled in the pocket of his trousers, the other pale and nails blue wrapped around the stack of books clutched to his chest. He jogs up the stairs hoping that the exertion will warm him, but it only makes his lungs sting. 

Aemilius Paullus Hall, rather insensitively named for the Athenian campus, is an old one. The brickwork is light in colour, having been bleached by the sun over the years, but no less pristine, the broad Corinthian columns supporting an elegant frieze detailing the Virtues leading Minerva. The three sets of double doors have bronze handles, the name of the building painted on their windows with the same metallic colour. The doors lead into a grand lobby with a high ceiling, railings lining three floors like balconies, a warm, minimalist chandelier hanging from the large dome above the lobby, with skylights letting in the overcast sky. The halls are tiled, each corridor leading to a small domed veranda with two doors on each side of the hallway leading to lecture halls and classrooms. Beneath the domes, mosaics decorate the floor with aesthetic scenes of still life. Four large lecture halls dominate the first floor, above them classrooms, and offices at the top floor along with the political science library. 

His oxfords click on the tile as he walks briskly to the stairwell, the same stairwell he takes each day even though both lead to the same place. A spherical, muted light at the landing of the stairs flickers audibly. It provides a certain ambiance that might have struck Brutus as unsettling if he were more sensitive to those things. He continued on his way without a thought to it, and entered room APH CCXIV, the title painted on the frosted window on the door. 

The classroom is dismal, brown wooden walls and muted carpet floor, tall windows overlooking the courtyard where fallen leaves cover the surface of the duck pond. He takes his seat in the middle of the second row, in full view of the professor’s rostra, the chalkboard, and her desk. The furnace purrs quietly, stirring the smell of coffee around the room and up to the high, dusty ceiling. There isn’t much to look at in the classroom, as it is all but barren of decorations, save a bulletin board by the door with old flyers and reminders on it that have long become obsolete, perched there on islands of cork where the rest had been picked off the students. 

Gradually, the room started to fill until fifteen students occupied the room, many empty desks between them. The professor was two minutes late, but she had a tendency to be so on Mondays. She apologised, as always, and rested her coat on the back of her chair, put her briefcase on the desk, and fished for her materials for class. It was to be somewhat of an easy day, Brutus figured, given that they had taken an exam the Friday prior and would be starting a new chapter. Military Theory is not his best class ; the thinking does not come easily to him. Dealing with someone man - to - man on the Senate floor is one thing. He has no problem understanding law and its loopholes, constructing arguments, and giving them without fear, but fighting tactic includes a myriad of other factors. It is easy to decide whether someone is right or wrong, and it is easy to find evidence to support that, but to battle someone into submission is a different matter entirely. 

The projector hums to life and she writes the date at the top of the clear sheet, and, beside it, “effective artillery composition”. He copies it onto his paper and colours in one of the cubes on the grided paper. She goes to her desk once more and take out a thick, orange folder. She unties the fastener and pulls out a stack of white papers. Brutus perks up as he realises that they are last week’s graded tests. She swipes her thumb across her tongue and begins to distribute them. Brutus is handed his packet face down. He turns it over nervously. 

A gory, mutilated page stares back at him, angry marks of violent red slashing over the page, so overwhelming in concentration, his eyes can’t seem to focus on any of it. He isn’t even sure of his score, he cannot bring himself to look, all he can see is red. He flips through the pages quietly, almost hunkered down to keep anyone else from seeing. The professor lectures far away. Red covers the pages, sharp damnations written in the margins, and a few patronising question marks thrown in for good measure. He suddenly feels as if someone is pushing down on the soft spot of junction between his collarbone and his throat, cutting off his airway, making it so his chest can hardly expand, let alone process oxygen. Brutus can feel his heart thundering, his hands grow clammy, and his eyes squint shut for a horrible moment. _You aren’t trying hard enough. You’re distracted. You’re too stupid to handle this. You don’t belong here. You don’t belong in this program. You don’t deserve your name. You don’t deserve anything._ The humiliation is overwhelming, and he suddenly grows hyper aware of everyone around him, as if they all know of this black mark sitting on his desk, this dangerous plague to his perfect image, his perfect GPA, his perfect composure.

He swallows hard, blinks camly, and places the test in a random page of his notebook. Brutus glances down and sees red along the top margin sticking out from the top of the test and he folds it carelessly away from sight. 

Brutus lives in a small home just outside the campus in a historic neighbourhood of homes centered around a small forum, despite the main forum of downtown Athens being a twenty minute drive away. It boasts a more village-esque life of independently owned post offices and bodegas, and a quaint temple to Athena at the very centre, and town ordinances would take place on the steps leading up to the wooden double doors. 

His house is a single story with an annex hanging above the withdrawing room with a balcony leading out beneath a tall citrus tree. Everything was small but no less luxurious, befitting the illustrious Iunius name. The porch is framed by two small white columns, and, on the side of the house, a trellis of bougainvillea crawl up the pale wall to the red shingles lining the roof. A single housekeeper ran the menial work of cooking, cleaning, receiving guests, and even serving, at times, as head of household, when Brutus’s duties as both student and pater familias drew him thin. 

He hears Antony before he sees him, and before that, he sees the branches of the orange tree outside the annex convulse beyond the usual sway with the cold afternoon wind. Brutus huffs as he holds onto his papers once the door squeals open and the gusts sweet in, sending the dust motes swirling through the soft light of the sun. Antony comes up behind him and leans down, resting his calloused hands on Brutus’s slight shoulders to brace himself as he presses a sloppy kiss to his cheek. “What did we do in class? I was too hungover to go,” he says as insouciantly as he would if they caught up in the halls between classrooms and lecture halls. Antony’s home invasions are not a particular rarity. 

“I don’t remember.” 

“You don’t remember?” He parrots. 

“No, I don’t.”

“Let me copy your notes,” he says as he goes to rifle through Brutus’s bag propped against the desk without waiting for an affirmative. Brutus’s eyes flicker with a sudden alarm, but realises it is too late to stop Antony. He hopes that treating this all mildly will keep Antony from smelling the blood in the water. He has no idea why he allows Antony to see him like this, to know these things about him. Perhaps it is some form of punishment, or perhaps he gets off on the danger of someone so cruel seeing him so naked, more bare than if he was stripped down to his skin. “I see we got the tests back. Great score as always, Brutus,” he waggles the paper.

“Leave me alone.”

“These are honour roll grades, you know. Maybe you’ll make the Consul’s List, yeah?”

Brutus stands from the desk, finally facing Antony, his fists clenched so tightly at his sides that his knuckles threatened to pop. “I don’t need to take this from someone who doesn’t even know how to hold a pen, let alone write his own fucking name with it.”

“Oh, _come on_ , I’m just teasing you. Are you crying? You’re crying!” Antony laughs. “It’s just one test, Brutus, calm down.” Brutus huffs quietly through his nose, glancing away. His whole body radiates heat, and his jaw tightens as he can feel the dreadful wetness of tears that start to well up in his eyes. Antony turns the paper over, his fingers folding the page across the staple. Outside, an afternoon rain starts to splatter against the window panes. He scans over each answer as he speaks, this time quieter, “It’s not just one test, is it? You don’t think I’ve failed a few tests, a few classes?”

“Well, you’re _you_.” He breathes shallowly, trying not to let the crack in his voice show. Antony recoils.

“Yeah, and you’re better than me, aren’t you?”

Brutus doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to. His silence says more than any words could have. 

“If you weren’t so mean, I might have offered to help you.”

“Why would I want your help?” He snarls. 

“I’m glad you asked,” he says, unfazed in the face of Brutus’s upset. He gropes in his backpack, which is flimsy from lack of content, and finds a packet of paper crumpled among the void of Antony’s effects. Brutus already knows what it is before he looks, but still, he takes the paper anyway. It is a perfect score on the same exam. “Military and Strategic Studies is my major, idiot.”

What is there for Brutus to say? Of course he knows Antony’s major, and of course Antony knows he knows. They are at a stalemate, or so Brutus thinks. Antony has what Brutus needs, but he would rather fail than a class and ruin everything he has worked for than ask for his help and thus go back on his word. That isn’t true. It cannot be true. How far would Brutus go to be perfect? Or rather, how far would he go to sustain the idea that he is perfect? Is life as an imperfect man worth living?

Antony speaks before Brutus can think of something, _anything_ , to say. “You’re lucky I want to keep you sweet.”

His brow furrows. “What does that mean?”

“It means that I’m the only one allowed to make you cry.” Brutus’s face begins to screw up in disgust and upset, and he is about to protest when he reins himself in. He cannot mess this up. “So, I’ll help you out just this once.”

“That’s very generous - ” Antony cuts him off with a simple quirk of his lips.

“…for a price,” he finishes. 

“Name it.”

“If, _when_ , you become Student Senator, make me your Imperator.” 

Brutus balks. Imperators serve as the representatives of the ROTC division at each Imperial University, and to be confirmed as one by the Student Senate, the student government spanning across the entire University district, from Hispania to Cyrenaica to Pontus to Cisalpine Gaul, is a shining badge on the young soldier’s blossoming career. It promises attention, internship, audience, and confirms them as a leader and student of formidable note. Brutus, while his campaign was glowing and voting day still on the horizon, had already been planning on giving it to Cassius. “Can’t we just have sex?”

“We already do,” Antony shrugs, disinterested. “The point of _bartering_ is for us each to get something that we don’t have. You get y - ”

“We can do it in public.”

Antony’s eyebrows raise with interest, and for a flicker of a moment, he almost seems moved from his original request. “Brutus, are you trying to _prostitute_ yourself?” 

“I’ve done worse for less.”

“Would I really make that bad of an Imperator?”

 _Quite the contrary,_ Brutus thinks to himself. Whatever Antony lacks in qualification, which isn’t much at all, he makes up for in popularity. Rumours swirl and his reputation is somewhat of a gutter, but no matter what he does, his vices draw a sort of chaotic respect from the student body. That admiration hasn’t escaped Brutus, either. Antony does whatever he wants in spite of their rigid society, and, by doing so, takes control of his life in a place where being a young person means surrendering everything. It rouses a flare of jealousy in Brutus at times, though he could never be introspective enough to know it. 

Brutus’s adversity to Antony as his Imperator isn’t a matter of merit, but of debt, in a way. It’s not that he is indebted to Cassius, but rather he feels the inclination of friendship to him. It is a strange feeling to Brutus, who doesn’t have many acquaintances who linger with him only for his bank - table and prowess, to be genuinely liked. Still, despite their closeness and mutual love for one another, it isn’t like Cassius is unqualified for the position. His grades are fine, certainly better than Antony’s, his military ability is notable, but inferior to Antony. Cassius’s only bane is his savage temper that has a tendency to derail his rationality, but, then again, that isn’t to say that Antony shares a very similar vice. 

“The final isn’t getting any further away, you know,” Antony sing - songs, holding up Brutus’s leather bound planner he takes from the finely organised desk. “You can make me Imperator and I’ll get you a perfect score in the class, let alone the test, _or_ you can go your own way. I hear Appia has office hours tomorrow at nine.” Brutus grits his teeth. He would rather fail the class than go into a professor’s office, his tail between his legs, his wretched test clutched in his hands and begging for help because he was too stupid to understand the content the first time. He sees it as an affront to the professor’s teaching and an affront to his own intellect. It is his perfection or doing what he can to further Cassius’s career. Brutus’s eyes, the pale grey of a painter’s brush swirled in clear water, narrow with resolve. Cassius needn’t ever know.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> brutus gets his mail. someday i will write about something happy

Brutus loves the way the mailroom smells. Metallic from the walls of ornate brass mailboxes shaped like honeycombs and sweet from the paper dusted with the dirt of travel, a warmth that hung in the stagnant air that hung in the labyrinth, heated by printers and the flurried movement of work study students filling letters and packages away from cubby to cubby. His gleaming shoes scuff mousily on the shorthaired carpet, and his keys jingle in his hands. He runs his index finger over the sharp line of the mailbox key, feels the number engraved on the face, and goes to box CCXXXVII. The small door creaks as it swings open, shadows falling across the fine engraving of the university’s crest. Brutus takes a pile of scrolls, resting them against his side and in the crook of his arm, and gropes about in the mailbox in case any notes were loosened. Satisfied, he closes the mailbox and turns the key. 

He walks blindly through the labyrinth, turning each scroll to read the wax seals, determining the sender. Some of it is junk, offers of loans, offers of ranks among collegiums, offers of get-to-know-you feasts, and advertisements for the first chariot race of the season against the Imperial University of Rome at Carthage. Others are more appealing, such as letters addressed from his international relations instructor, Professor Amyntas, and a notice for a student senate jury. One scroll is sealed with a stamp of Juno. Brutus shuffles the scrolls from one arm to another, and he isolates it, stepping to the side of the barren hallway to pull the scroll apart. 

The parchment is familiar; flax papyrus from the cataracts of Upper Egypt, slightly green with youth, scented of pear and magnolia and the bittersweet safety of a childhood home. Brutus learned to write on this paper. There are still fragments hidden somewhere of summons for Uncle Cato to report to the westerly gardens for a meeting on military strategy against the tyrannical king. The scroll comes from Rome. The scroll comes from an entire world away. 

Brutus unravels it. His mother’s handwriting, her letters sharp and her macrons thin, evokes her voice. The curls of her lines, the way they flow from one word into the other, is her smile bridging her sentences with a simple theme of love and adoration. Her heavy dots the pressure of her lips on his forehead, her fingers on his cheek, the surprising strength of hands as she held him close as they stood in a room of boxes and said their goodbyes. “My Marc,” she begins, “Rome seems a little less bright without you in it, but Athens is lucky to have you. It might be a bit soon to be writing you, but I am feeling particularly lost without my biggest duckling. I don’t want you to look back, though, because I know you are having fun, making friends, learning new things, and changing the world just by being yourself. You are  _ never _ alone; I am always just a call away, day or night. Everyone here sends their love, but none more than I. Whatever you choose to do, I will always be proud of you. Hope to hear from you soon, and you will always be my bumblebee. Love you!” She signs, “Mother.” 

A few pictures flutter to the floor. Brutus lets the scroll roll back up and bends down to grab them, his short-nailed fingers scrabbling on the carpet. There are three photographs in total, and he studies each in turn after meticulously wiping his nose on the back of his hand and contemplating the bright fluorescent light for a moment. 

The first one is significantly old. A couple is pictured, a man and a woman. The woman has light brown hair, long and curled, a light ribbon holding it in a pragmatic Greek style, a few strands escaping and blending into the brickwork in the background. She smiles broad, pink lips parted to show a row of teeth that sparkle in the flash, sweaty cheeks illuminated and shadowed at the same time by an aquiline nose, and earrings that hang from her lobes. Her arms are wrapped around the torso of a man wearing a wool sweater, who has his arm around her shoulders. His hair is cut short and curt, dark brown turned black in the light. He smiles faintly, the relaxation in his eyes betraying his content more than his lips, which hide a tooth gap in his front teeth. He looks older, more weathered, less satisfied than the woman holding onto him. Brutus doesn’t need to see the timestamp to know that the times were troubling. People tell him he shares nothing with the man in the photograph, save their dark hair and cheekbones and narrow, scrutinizing eyes. 

The next photograph was taken on a mountainside. Brutus recognises it, but Junia Prima would not. He is a little older than a boy, cheeks still puffed with childish fat, a jacket tied around his tunic and socks stuffed under the immaculate straps of his sandals. His arm is thrown around his sister’s shoulders, who grins open mouthed at the camera, squinting into the sunlight. Her hair is light, almost blonde, and her clothes are ill-fitting, and a bicycle helmet is clipped to her head. Vaguely, Brutus remembers the sound of her cries when their mother fastened it beneath her throat and it caught the sensitive skin just under her jaw. They used to ride their bikes through the park when they were young, watching as dusk turns to twilight and the orange lights came on, and the sound of cicadas became deafening. The creak of a swingset, the scent of wood chips, the crack of a static shock, the warm scarlet baptism of Apollo’s final love on his scabbed knees and scrawny arms. 

The last is much more recent. Brutus stands on the stairs leading up to an amphitheater, only a rostra featured on the stage. His sisters stand next to him, his mother tacked on the end. Tertia still has the cuteness of a child not yet thrown into the despair of puberty. In fact, they all bear that genre of innocence. They smile at the camera. Even Brutus wears a grin. His grey eyes are bright, aware, albeit tired, his clothes a bit disheveled but still in a perfect state, his toga tailored and well-folded. It frames the certificate in his hands and the laurel crown on his head with regalia. He cannot remember the last time he was as happy as he was after winning the Youth Orators Grand Prix. His manner of speech was always somewhat Spartan, never as illustrious as his peers', curt and bold in his brevity, witty and exact with his manipulation of syntax. Endless speeches that ramble and reiterate with no abstinence of figrativity and narration is juvenile and quickly boring. But an avant-garde, almost unfashionable, shortness of oration exudes importance and authority. It was a way of speaking of his own design, against Cicero's advice and Cato's insistence that the entire competition was a farce. He only now sees the irony in his unbridled delight at the success of a speech with an almost jarring conciseness. Brutus tells himself that the colour in his cheeks and weight on his limbs and gleam in his eyes is youth, inexperience, a sign of failed Stoicism. Now, looking in the bronze honeycombs, his visage is warped and dismembered, almost monstrous. The parts of him are the same, but they are prone to dysfunction and defection, burned out in a way where they can only return to their new state by repair after repair after repair. Fix me, he cries, and pumps his salvation into his veins.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Antony gets sick :( this is just brutus/antony fluff sorry

Antony may have paid for a massive fraternity house, but he was still in the university’s military programme, and so it was Brutus who plucked the key from his pocket to open the door to the tall grey barracks at the east end of campus. The first light of the morning is ivory, giving just a hint of warmth in the cold air. The plain white halls of the barracks, more stark and bare than the sorry state of the dormitories, are empty, and the sound of shouts and jodies echo from the yard outside. 

Antony is pallid and visibly sweating, staggering as he follows Brutus blindly up the stairwell, which smells suspiciously chemical. His dry lips are set in a miserable line, the malicious gleam in his eyes reduced to a matte stare, gleaming only with the sickly wetness there. Brutus looks out of place among the harsh white walls and blinding flourescent light, spartan decor and dismal atmosphere. His trousers are well-tailored and gingerly ironed with a crease, his dark burgundy shirt seeming to shimmer under the merciless light, his golden cufflinks warm and his watch constructed with kind consideration. Whatever his sect of Stoicism is, it does not align with the aesthetic of this building, which lacks everything and wants for nothing. 

He comes to Antony’s room and pushes the key in the faulty lock, jiggling it and pressing it with expertise until it grants him entrance. Brutus is too busy grabbing ahold of Antony’s shirt collar to keep him from falling backward to wonder when he had memorised the path to Antony’s dorm. It is bare of just about everything, except a few essentials, and some illicit supplies hidden in the worn walls and ripped mattress. His nights are usually spent in the palatial frat house rather than this overglorified storage closet with a bed and a desk. Still, it smells like Antony, and traces of his life are still evident. A few pages of abandoned homework lay on the desk, a can of ginger ale beside it. His navy blue sheets are spilled onto the dusty floor, a sweatshirt tossed haphazardly onto the chest of drawers.

Brutus makes Antony’s bed while he showers across the hall. Before he heard the shower begin to run, he heard the sound of retches echoing through the barren hall. He sets out a cocktail of pills on his desk and pulls the sweatshirt on, which musses his hair. The fabric on the inside has pilled, and on the outside, the bright red writing is steadily peeling off. “ _ Legio III Fortuna Athenarum _ ”, it read. Brutus pulls the covers tight, tucking them beneath the mattress as Antony returns, shivering in the cold. Breathing heavily, Antony dresses in the spare clothes in his chest of drawers. He puts on a pair of boxers backwards and rifles through the drawers for a moment before he turns to Brutus with a frown. Antony’s gaze relaxes as he sees his sweatshirt hanging off of Brutus’s slighter frame, and he instead puts on a white tee shirt with old yellow sweat stains. He hurries out of the room suddenly. Brutus wonders, only for a moment, if he should comfort him somehow, but Brutus has a habit of warding off the very notion of intimacy with his cold presence. Instead, he pretends not to hear him throwing up. Antony, despite his chaoticism, needed a semblance of control, and he was already forced to sit out from PT and his watches and his duty. In fact, he can barely speak for the pain in his throat. Helplessness is a word Antony likes out of his vocabulary, and so Brutus does nothing that could invoke it.

Antony returns and swallows the pills Brutus had set out for him (an antibiotic, a Tylenol, a Dramamine, and a Percocet to show his love). He brushes past Brutus and collapses on the bed. His eyes are squinted shut and his knuckles are white as he grips the covers. He pulls them up viciously and wriggles beneath them with a heavy sigh, the faintest traces of his voice lining it until it seemed like he gave a groan or whimper. Antony leaves the covers pulled down. A single eye opens to stare pointedly at Brutus. 

Brutus protests for only a moment before he tugs his loafers off and leaves his finely laundered trousers and shirt on the ground. The loose hem of the sweatshirt tickles the very tops of his bare thighs as he crawls over Antony. He rests between the rough drywall and Antony, whose skin is cold and clammy against his. He rests his arm against Antony’s waist, pressing close to him so his hand splays open on Antony’s barrel chest. It isn’t long until calloused fingers lace between his. He can feel Antony’s lungs strain against his hand, his irregular, laborious breath so unfamiliar that, if Brutus didn’t know any better, he might have thought Antony was crying. Either way, his breath eventually steadies and the medicine lulls him into Somnus's embrace, and Brutus along with him. 


	4. Comet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> brutus has a healthy coping mechanism for once. (or, when school gets overwhelming, brutus reflects on his struggles during a night run)

_Breathe_. His breath was fire, stirring in his dragon lungs and panting out into the empty night air in measured huffs. _Press_. His feet curled on the ground, his tendons springing up against bones, against the earth, against that which he could not control, and made it malleable and crowned himself its master. _Focus_. The darkness slid against his bare chest, and the moonlight sparkled against the sheen of sweat that dripped from his brow and off the tip of his nose, that ran between his churning shoulder blades in salty rivulets, and settled at the waistline of his shorts, just above the dimple above his tailbone. His blood roared in his ears, inhales and exhales guiding it along the path in his mind, the quiet shush of a celestial body racing billions of miles away. He was a comet sailing along his elliptical orbit in the cosmos.

He had barely sacrificed a moment to stretch his limbs before he began, simply drawing his Achilles out as he walked to the track and stretching his arms behind him. The moment his feet stepped on the track, he was running. His long strides and disciplined form slowly pulled his tendons out as he completed his first mile, his lungs expanding large in his ribcage, the lean, sinewy muscles on his calves and thighs swelling with their adrenaline and fatigue, his toes growing snug in his shoes. Like Osiris, his body was scattered. Each mile was another hack, a tug, a satisfying tear of his body left behind in the length of track behind him. Still, as his corpse was strewn and lost, his mind pieced itself back together. Brutus ran in the darkness of the second hour.

It was a stark juxtaposition from where he last raced not but two hours ago, sitting at a desk in the deepest annals of the basement floor of the library where the lights buzzed loudly and the bookshelves creaked to one another and old testaments to students' boredom were tattooed in the wood of the desk. His breath was poison, hot and gaseous, clouding his mind and driving him mad. His toes curled in his shoes, tendons springing against bones as he gripped his pen, against that which he could not control, and let it drown him. The bright light exposed him and stared at the tears that overflowed from his brown eyes and fell into his lap from the flex of his gritting jaw. His thoughts twisted in his mind, and the huff of breath that might have been a sob if he knew how to cry, but it was the roar of a meteor falling through the atmosphere, burning itself up as it wailed to the hard surface. _How much longer can I do this? How much longer can I physically maintain this?_

His gait stumbled, a stride taken too short. His hip jutted up slightly, his knee grasping its own tendons in an attempt to stabilize himself. Some invisible force bore into the vulnerability below his neck and above his collarbone. It constricted him until he could no longer tolerate anything but his fear own fear. The water threatened to overcome him, those churning waves that only seemed to grow more and more aggravated within the storm laughed as the freezing water startled him, diving up his nose and into his eyes. But the burning in his muscles was louder, his currents of blood demanded restitution, and the sweat on his skin was growing hot. There was no time for fear and letting himself succumb to the waves to drift into the unintelligible depths was no longer a choice he could make.

 _Breathe_. He breathed. _Press_. He pressed. _Focus_. He focused and ran into the darkness of the third hour.


End file.
